Transforming the nation's consciousness on race through the law, social science, and the arts.

EJS Supports Call for Criminal Investigation Into Torture

On Wednesday, April 29, 2009, the Board and Staff of the Equal Justice Society sent the following to the Senate and House Judiciary Committees:

The Equal Justice Society would like to go on record as supporting the call to start a criminal investigation by a special counsel into harsh interrogations of terrorism suspects. We have been shocked by recent revelations of abuses that were committed in our name as Americans. We were shocked to learn that our government used tactics perfected during the Spanish Inquisition and refined by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. As a civil rights organization, we denounced the use of torture during the Bush administration to no avail. Now as a country, we have an opportunity to reclaim our honor.

President Obama addressed this issue tonight in his press conference when he said, “I was struck by an article that I was reading the other day talking about the fact that the British during World War II, when London was being bombed to smithereens, had 200 or so detainees. And Churchill said, “We don’t torture,” when the entire British — all of the British people were being subjected to unimaginable risk and threat.
“And the reason was that Churchill understood — you start taking short-cuts, over time, that corrodes what’s best in a people. It corrodes the character of a country. And so I strongly believed that the steps that we’ve taken to prevent these kinds of enhanced interrogation techniques will make us stronger over the long term and make us safer over the long term because it will put us in a — in a position where we can still get information. “In some cases, it may be harder, but part of what makes us, I think, still a beacon to the world is that we are willing to hold true to our ideals even when it’s hard, not just when it’s easy”

You know of the work of the Equal Justice Society and what we stand for. We want to add our voices to those calling for an accounting. We hope that the legislature will make sure that no one is above the law.

Thank you, thank you for writing this on our behalf. I believe Barack Obama is aware of Franklin Roosevelt’s admonition to those who wanted him (FDR) to reverse the bad policies of the past and help them to “make him” do it by keeping the pressure up and fighting for what they believed in. I am grateful EJS is there to do that for us as we get caught up in trying to make a living, get our children off to school, etc. AND to remind us that we have a part to play as well. Thank you again. I am revived once more.

About EJS

The Equal Justice Society is transforming the nation’s consciousness on race through law, social science, and the arts. Led by President Eva Paterson, our legal strategy aims to broaden conceptions of present-day discrimination to include unconscious and structural bias by using social science, structural analysis, and real-life experience.